Italian Salad (1844)

 From Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery (1844): 

Italian Salad.--E. R.--Pick the white portion of a cold fowl from the bones in small flakes, pile it in the centre of a dish, and pour a salad mixture over, enriched with cream; make a wall around with salad of any kind, laying the whites of the eggs cut into rings on the top in a chain. 

The "salad of any kind" gives a lot of leeway there. Just on the same page, Mrs. Rundell mentions purslane, lettuces, mustard, cress, chives, "any kind of young herb in season," endive, celery, cabbage, as well as various other vegetables which can be included in salads (even if they don't meet the "salading" definition, which I tend to read as the leafy green portion). Over in The Domestic Oracle (1860), salads include various combinations of spinach, parsley, sorrel, lettuce, pennyroyal, mint tops, balm, endive, colewort, cabbage, tarragon, and nettle-tops. Soyer's A Shilling Cookery for the People (1855) includes salads based on lettuce, cabbage, endive, terragon, chervil, marsh mallow root, mustard, cress, chives, and observes that "beetroot, onions potatoes, celery, cucumbers, lentils, haricots, succory or barbe-de-capucin, winter cress, burnet, tansey, marigold, peas, French beans, radish, cauliflower... may be used judiciously in salad if properly seasoned." He also mentions using nasturtiums flowers as a garnish for salads, a practice which also appears in The Family Hand-book (1838). The Domestic Gardener's Manual (1830) also mentions as salad ingredients corn salad aka lamb lettuce; flowers and young leaves of nasturtium aka Indian cress; young artichoke bottoms; blanched celery; green onions; and mustard. It particularly discusses planting mustard and cress to be used in salads together. The Kitchen Garden (1855) mentions, in addition to the above, dandelion and rocket (arugula) being used in some French salads, though I've only otherwise seen those in English gardening books rather than cookery ones. Garden rocket is known in these books as a "salad herb", and was used by the English in salads during the early modern period, but appears to be out of favor by the 19th century-- which is unfortunate, as I have a great deal of it in my garden just now.

Anyway, taking all of that together, I decided to use my period "Tom Thumb" lettuce, supplemented with spinach, the first endive of the season, and the water cress that's just coming up in my container garden. It's tiny, but in need of thinning.

I started the evening before by by pre-cooking two chicken breasts (since I didn't have any convenient left-overs and was making Paprika Chicken anyway), picking my vegetables, and washing the leaves. In the morning, I boiled two eggs, sliced them, and removed the yolk for making the "salad mixture" or dressing. 

Salad Mixture.--E. R.--Salad mixture is like punch, the greater the number of ingredients the better; it is rather difficult, however, to give the proportions, so much depending upon the strength of the vinegar and the preference given to oil. Boil two eggs hard, and beat the yolks very smoothly with the back of a spoon, with two small teaspoonfuls of salt and the same of made mustard; add two tablespoonfuls of sweet oil or two of cream, three of vinegar, a dessert-spoonful of essence of anchovies, one of mushroom ketchup, and one of walnut ditto; to this may be added a salt spoonful of cayenne pepper, while some persons think a teaspoonful of sugar an improvement.

The instruction go on to explain how a raw egg yolk should be added if no oil is used (and the next entry describes using mashed potato in place of either). I decided to simply use the oil, and made up the dressing as indicated: 2 boiled egg yolks mashed with 2 tsp salt and mustard, to which I then stirred in 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 Tbsp cream, 3 Tbsp white wine vinegar, and 1/2 tsp cayenne. I omitted the anchovies (which I don't like) and the ketchups (which I did not have). As the Italian salad instructions specify cream, I added that to the recipe, but since I didn't want to mess around with raw egg or mashed potato, I chose to treat it as an addition rather than a substitution. I think "the greater number of ingredients the better" remark provides a reasonable basis for adding the cream.

Anyway, from there I built the salad as directed: piling the chicken in the center of the platter, making a "wall" of drained and mixed salad greens around it, pouring the dressing over the chicken, and garnishing with the egg whites. I tried to cut the eggs to get rings for the garnish, but instead ended up with a combination of solid circles and broken rings; I then went to plan B, and simply minced all the egg whites before adding it as a garnish.

 

Italian Salad.

Reactions were generally favorable. I found the dressing way too salty on its own, but once it was spread over the meat and vegetables, it became quite palatable. I also need to remember a larger platter; although the proportions worked when served, on the platter the lettuce ended up mounded so tall that it concealed the chicken entirely.  All in all, this receipt had a lot in common with other mid-19th century salads I've made, so it was quite tasty, but with the benefit of using the vegetables in season at this exact moment (unlike, say, Beeton's, which calls for cucumber, beets, etc., that I won't be harvesting until late summer).

I'm looking forward to experimenting more with this and other historic salad recipes over summer, as different plants mature in my garden. I have a steady line-up of events from different centuries over most of July, and into August/September, as well as a succession of lettuce, spinach, arugula, water cress, salad burnet, purslane, nasturtium, borage, and upland cress (not to mention the mint and other herbs).